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Rapper Honey Singh has been a chart-topper this year, and two of the five most-searched for videos on YouTube for 2012 were his songs.

The rapper’s misogynistic and deeply-troubling lyrics are unacceptable now to thousands in a country that is mourning the death of a young student who was gang-raped on a moving bus in Delhi. One song, released in 2006, brags about the different ways in which the singer will sexually assault a woman.

In his songs , Honey Singh explains how Dope-Shope is not just not good for your health, but also harms your Punjabiyan di Shaan (pride of being from Punjab). He tells you how not to sell your land away, buying gifts for women and running after them; he makes fun of the brown girl hooked on Angrezi Weed (there is a debate raging about whether he sings Angrezi ‘beat’ or ‘weed’ or both – a confusion which Singh has not cleared), and also tells them to take pride in their brown skinned-sexuality. The cult figure that he is today however, launched itself to iconic status with the song Choot (cunt) – a song that his young fans may experience as ‘subversive’ not merely for its open use of sexually charged abuse but also for the way it seeks to teach the young floundering woman a lesson.

These pornographic lyrics are unacceptable and it is because of women hating (sic) sentiments like these that men think that it’s fine to do what they did on that bus, that December night in Delhi. Let’s put a stop to these subversive lyrics that infiltrate the minds of people who don’t know better and who then justify to themselves the rightness of a crime that harms another human being, sometimes so severely that they lose their lives.”

Mr Singh’s massive popularity is more reason why he should be held to account and told — in no uncertain terms — that his deeply offensive and regressive songs have no place in civilised society. Mr Singh is to perform because the idea is not to curb Mr Singh’s right to express himself – no matter how offensive his lyrics may be – but because the people have the right to not listen to Honey Singh.